Note: All statistics used in this article can be referenced in the statistics section below
As students prepared for the week before winter break, they faced an unexpected challenge: semester exams. Although it may seem like this came out of the blue, the semester exams play a crucial role in maintaining Coppell ISD and New Tech’s ability to maintain its funding, which is necessary to pay teachers, support services, and keep schools open. Let’s break it down.
According to usnews.com, CISD has an annual revenue of $167,767,000. However, much of this is taken up by paying instructors ($78.1 million), support services ($44.7 million), and miscellaneous ($3.4 million). This brings the total current expenses to be approximately $126,123,000. Now, to cover these costs, the district gets significant funding from the federal, state, and local governments, 86.7%, 9.4%, and 3.9% respectively. This funding is predicated on student attendance. In other words, the more students show up, the more money the district gets. In fact, CISD gets approximately $12,853 per student. Considering the number of students in CISD, this number totals a significant amount.
Because we need funding to keep our school’s programs open and running, CISD strives to maximize attendance, with an overall attendance of 95.6% in 2023. However, according to an article by Celie Price, every 1% attendance drop costs the district $900,000 in funding.
To combat this issue, New Tech has decided to implement districtwide semester exam policies. All students are required to take said exams unless they meet all of the following criteria: 3 or fewer unexcused absences, 0 disciplinary placements, and presence during exam dates. These metrics are meant to increase attendance, especially closer to winter break. As many people travel during winter break, they tend to leave a few days to a week early, drastically dropping attendance numbers. Requiring semester exams solves this issue as students are incentivized to refrain from leaving school early, as failure to come to school results in an automatic 50% on the test.
Similar standards will be used during the spring semester exams, incentivizing many students to minimize absences. Above all, this policy will likely significantly increase attendance and revenue for CISD.
